Page 4 of Glorious Sinner

I quickly opened the door and slammed it shut behind me, leaned against it, and squeezed my eyes closed.

I knew one thing for sure: I would never call him, not ever, not for any reason. Being anywhere near him scared the hell out of me. Tomas was dangerous. Wild.

God, so tempting.

But, I got the feeling that no one got close to Tomas Mendoza and walked away unscathed. I rubbed my wrist where it still tingled from his touch. He made me feel like I was walking too close to an active volcano.

And I had no intention of getting burned.

Six years later

I lay on the bathroom floor, blinking up at the ceiling. Every bone in my body, every part of me was hurting. My skin was slick with blood, and breathing wasn’t so easy. Probably a punctured lung. If I didn’t get help soon, I was pretty sure I was going to die. I was going to die before I got a chance to live.

My right arm wasn’t working, so I reached with my left. My phone got knocked off the bathroom counter when the first punch came, and it was still there, just out of reach. I pressed my split lips together to hold back my cry of pain and used my foot against the tub to slide my body across the bloody tiles.

I finally reached the phone with the tips of my fingers and dragged it closer, wincing as I tapped the button to open my contacts list. I needed to call for an ambulance, but if I didn’t do this first, before they fed me painkillers and I lost consciousness, Ryan would come for me at the hospital. He’d take me out of there before I could talk to the police. He’d done it before.

Several of my fingers were broken, so it made it hard to scroll to the name I was looking for, but I finally found it.

Aunt Hetty.

My aunt had died four years ago, and she’d never owned a cell phone. But I’d been using her name to disguise the real person behind that number for six years.

I’d called it a few times, just not from my phone. Once from a phone someone had dropped at the club I’d worked at, just to see if the number was still the same. And most recently at a twenty-four-hour garage three months ago, when I’d started to think that Ryan might actually kill me if I didn’t find a way to get free of him.

He’d answered every time, and every time I’d stayed on the line for a few seconds to hear his voice, the strength of it, the harsh, deep growl of it. And every time he’d go quiet, silently waiting, like he knew, like somehow he knew it was me, and he was just waiting for me to say something.

That was probably just a fantasy, another layer of lies that I’d used to make my life bearable. He’d probably forgotten about me completely.

But whether he knew it or not, he’d been there for me all these years, through the fear and the horror. I’d told myself he was there, just a call away, and that made it bearable.

I touched the call button, struggling to draw in a breath as it rang.

A few seconds later that voice, that cold, hard voice that had represented safety to me, echoed through the bathroom. “Yes?”

Tomas.

I opened my mouth, but words wouldn’t come, blood coating my tongue. I coughed, a wheezing sound coming out of me. “T-t…” More coughing.

“Stephanie?”

I couldn’t talk. My jaw hurt too much and was swelling.

“Stephanie, is that you?” His voice was urgent.

It took everything I had left to say the words. “K-keep him…a-away.”

“Where are you? Are you at home?” he said.

I made a sound that I hoped he interpreted as a yes. Then I hit end and called for an ambulance.

Ryan never came.

Not once while I was in my private hospital room that the nurses assured me was paid for.

The police said my husband was missing and they didn’t have any leads.

I prayed every night that he’d never come back.